Wednesday, 23 May 2018

The First Annual Dave Gibson Labour History Lecture
Organised by Barnsley TUC and Barnsley College UCU

'Orwell and the Workers'
With Prof John Newsinger (Bath Spa University) and author of 'Hope Lies In the Proles': George Orwell and the Left

Saturday 16 June 1pm The Civic, Hanson Street, Barnsley, S70 2HZ

The first annual Dave Gibson labour history lecture will focus on George Orwell. Orwell visited Barnsley while researching ʻThe Road to Wigan Pierʼ and his collected works contain shocking details about the state of housing in Barnsley at the time of his visit. Dave Gibson used this information in his contribution to a Workers Educational Association course on labour history in Barnsley and Graham Mustin will give a short presentation based on Dave's lecture notes.
The main talk, entitled ʻOrwell and the Workersʼ will be by John Newsinger, professor of history at Bath Spa University and an acknowledged expert on Orwell. John has written the highly acclaimed ʻOrwell's Politicsʼ and most recently ʻOrwell and the Proles: George Orwell and the Leftʼ a critical account of Orwell's politics exploring his anti-fascism, criticism of the USSR and enduring commitment to socialism.

Tuesday, 1 May 2018

The latest issue of the London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter is now online - featuring a comment piece by Keith Flett on the Peterloo massacre in the light of the current massacres of Palestinians by the Israeli state in Gaza, a review of Communist Insurgent: Blanqui's Politics of Revolution by Doug Enaa Greene and an extended second part of a review of The Origins of Collective Decision Making by Andy Blunden. The deadline for the next issue of the Bulletin is 1 September 2018. Letters, articles, criticisms and contributions to debate are most welcome.

Upcoming LSHG seminars and events

Saturday 19 May - London Socialist Historians’ Group WorkshopTreason: Internationalist Renegades and Traitors
Saturday 19th May, 12 – 5pm
Wolfson Room, Institute of Historical Research
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.
Entry is free without ticket although there will be a collection to cover expenses, but please register via the eventbrite link here if possible
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/treason-tickets-44281819113

The Levellers who refused to support Cromwell’s war in Ireland, the Polish troops who rebelled against Napoleon and sided with the Haitian Revolution, the Irish-American “St Patrick’s Battalion” who rejected American imperialism to fight with the Mexicans, the British people who joined the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Confederate deserters who opposed slavery, the German anti-Nazis who deserted and joined the Red Army or fought with the French Resistance and the French anti-colonialists who sided with the independence fighters in Algeria and Vietnam. There have been some rare but truly inspiring and heroic examples of internationalism throughout modern history, when those being drafted into fighting for unjust wars rebelled to side and fight against imperialist oppression. This workshop will try to recover the lives and often hidden histories of these true ‘citizens of the world’, as well as considering moments in history where the potential for anti-imperialist internationalism did not materialise.

Entry to our seminars is free without ticket although donations are welcome.
We also have seminars pencilled in with agreed speakers on the 60th anniversary of CND, the school history curriculum and the history of Womens Voice for the Autumn Term 2018. For more information on any of the above please contact Keith Flett at the address above.

If you are of a certain age on the left your reaction
to the name Blanqui is probably ‘WRONG’ and that
is pretty much it. If you are younger the more
likely thought is ‘WHO?’ since the name of the
nineteenth century French revolutionary has
perhaps not featured a great deal in recent
discussions on the left.

Doug Enaa Greene and Haymarket Books have
therefore done a valuable service in rescuing
Blanqui from the enormous condescension of
posterity. Indeed Greene makes a good case for
why Blanqui deserves to be rescued.

He had a remarkably long life (1805-1881) given
various attempts at revolution, spells of
imprisonment often in poor conditions, and ill
health. He also had a magnificent beard.
Over such a long life there is inevitably a lot of
detail and for that a read of the book is required.
Here I will flag up a few points of perhaps key
interest.

Blanqui’s view was that revolution was needed,
always, but this would not come from the masses.
Rather it required a dedicated band of organised
revolutionaries, usually operating secretly and
conspiratorially to avoid interruption by the forces
of the existing order.

The conspiratorial model of revolution was the
dominant one where the question arose around
the world certainly up to 1848. It was used for
example by the Chartists in the summer of that
year with the usual unfortunate results. The
problem with conspiracy as a political method is
of course that it invites spies and Blanqui was
plagued by accusations that he knew of such
people or indeed was one.

That said, after the French Revolution on 25
February 1848, Blanqui did organise openly and
tried to push the revolution further, albeit
unsuccessfully.

Marx and Engels did not agree with Blanqui’s
politics and often said so. They were for an open
mass workers organisation. Where they did reach
general agreement with Blanqui was on the
principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Greene argues that Marx and Engels invariably
stood by Blanqui as a shining and obvious example
of someone who believed in revolutionary ends
even if they did not agree about the means.
Greene also notes that Blanqui was thought to be a
useful bulwark against Bakunin’s supporters on the
First International.

Blanqui supported the Paris Commune and his
supporters had a key role in it while not seeing it
as a prototype model for workers’ control as Marx
and Engels did. His influence continued to an
extent after his death.

Some of his supporters turned to interventions in
electoral politics supporting the campaign of
General Georges Boulanger hoping it would lead to
a coup against the Government.
It did not and Greene notes that in a subsequent
split the majority of Blanqui’s remaining followers
aligned themselves with a nationalistic and antiSemitic
political trend and disappeared into
obscurity.

Blanqui had always been against all religion but his
views to modern eyes would be seen as antiSemitic
according to Greene. A minority of his
followers did not follow that path and by 1905
found themselves part of the French Socialist
Party.

It had been quite a political journey.

Greene’s biography deserves to be read not just as
history, but also as an important exploration of
political paths and methods which are not in the
main taken by the modern left, but without
question still find attraction for some.

The author and beard wearer Michael Rosen has
commented on social media that when it comes to
protests when the authorities injure or kill
protesters, they invariably claim that the protesters
are to blame. Certainly that seems to be the official
reaction to deaths and injuries of Palestinian
protesters at the Gaza border on 30 March 2018.
We should be cautious about historical comparisons
because we can’t be sure we are really comparing
like with like. Each situation has its own specificity
yet even so Rosen’s general point has validity.
When the Manchester Yeomanry cut down and killed
and injured protesters for the vote at Peterloo in
central Manchester on 16 August 1819, the
authorities blamed this on fleeing protesters.
Still, that was a long time ago.
This is what E.P. Thompson wrote in The Making of
the English Working Class about protest and justice
at Peterloo:

If the Government was unprepared for the news of
Peterloo, no authorities have ever acted so vigorously
to make themselves accomplices after the fact.
Within a fortnight the congratulations of Sidmouth
(Home Secretary - KF) and the thanks of the Prince
Regent were communicated to the magistrates and
the military ‘for their prompt, decisive and efficient
measures for the preservation of the public peace’.
Demands for a parliamentary enquiry were
resolutely rejected. Attorney and Solicitor-Generals
were ‘fully satisfied’ as to the legality of the
magistrates’ actions. The Lord Chancellor (Eldon)
was of the ‘clear opinion’ that the meeting was an
‘overt act of treason’.. State prosecutions were
commenced, not against the perpetrators, but against
the victims of the day- Hunt, Saxton, Bamford and
others- and the first intention of charging them with
high treason was only abandoned with reluctance. If
the Manchester magistrates initiated the policy of
repression, the Government endorsed it with every
resource at its disposal.. Hay, the clerical magistrate
prominent on the Peterloo bench, was rewarded with
the £2,000 living of Rochdale.'

Interestingly on the 150th anniversary of Peterloo in
1969 the Sunday Telegraph repeated the point. Even
at that distance the reality of the massacre had to
be denied.
The Mandrake column (20 July 1969) was headed
‘The massacre that never was’.

Reviewing a new
book, Robert Walmsley’s Peterloo: the case
reopened (MUP) it noted ‘most of the day’s
comparatively few casualties were caused were
caused by a trampling panic amongst the crowd’.
That is a reassuring explanation, and even if not a
factual one, a reminder about how to spin
unfortunate events in the present day perhaps….